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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24758518">try, try again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarmiles/pseuds/scarmiles'>scarmiles</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Childhood Trauma, Gen, POV Zuko (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko thinking through the years, and also nb zuko rights, and just trying his best to cope, he's blind and partially deaf on the burnt side of his face</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:14:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>509</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24758518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarmiles/pseuds/scarmiles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Zuko is thirteen and the world tastes like burning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>160</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>try, try again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just a quick thing about him growing through his life and thinking through the worst parts of it, a reflection of his character I suppose?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zuko is thirteen and the world tastes like ashes and burning— his face scalds and he can taste the copper and salt in his mouth but his life is red hot pain and a hollow feeling in his heart. There are people screaming in the background, jeers and howling laughter ringing through the court like a crow. Someone is bleeding in front of him, ember red pooling across the gold floor of his father's throne room. Breathe in, breathe out, Zuko opens his mouth and he cannot breathe. </p>
<p>Zuko is fourteen and the world looks like blurred lines and a strange numbness stretching flame to vivid scar. The world sounds like an underwater story, bubbling in and out of his ears. He looks in the mirror and can scarcely make out the shape of an empty socket, of a cheek. His uncle claims he is lucky but he doesn't feel it. He cannot see the arm held inches from his face and he wondered if his father had planned this all along. He wonders into the night if this was his destiny; the stars burn just as bright as his father's hand. </p>
<p>Zuko is fifteen and the world feels like Iroh's sad— always sad, never angry— eyes on his back and of the avatar's terrified stare as he runs. The power of it feels like soot in his teeth and nails on his skin and he wonders if this is what his father feels like. He wonders if his skin will crawl off of him in disgust and malpractice. Everywhere he turns he sees hints of himself and the broken boy he saw in the avatar's face. Shattered glass and burnt metal and all he can think to himself is that he is shaped wrong in all the wrong ways, skin growing over skin in the shape of a boy. </p>
<p>Zuko is sixteen and the world is tired, tired, tired. It is thick scars across pale limbs and his own marking him— "the face of the enemy", the girl's voice echoes in his head— he wakes up one morning and stares at the sky until the sun rises and sets and wonders. He is alone and he is lonely and he wants to go home— but where is home? He wants a lot of things. He wants to see again, not this false approximation of color and heat sense. He wants to look at himself in the mirror and feel correct. He wants to rip the empire's castle apart with nails and teeth until all that they have done is ash and burning. More than anything, he wants his uncle. </p>
<p>It is sunset and Zuko looks at the colors and the way they blend between sight and blindness. He stands, he stretches, he breathes. He can breathe again for the first time in years, the charcoal in his chest slumbering for the time being. There had been talk of the avatar retreating east— hiding from the war stricken lands in the long dead temples of his slaughtered people. </p>
<p>Maybe.</p>
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